Whiskey Lullaby
by Archer Princess
Summary: Jake lost Briar. Goldie lost Henry. The pains of lost love will get to everyone, but they are unable to deal with it. Songfic to "Whiskey Lullaby" as sung by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss. Oneshot. WARNING: Contains character death.


_**A/N**_

_**This is my first songfic, so excuse anything I missed when I researched sonfics! This is very different from anything I have ever written… As per usual, Please Review!**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the Sisters Grimm, by Michael Buckley, or the song Whiskey Lullaby, by Bill Anderson and Jon Randall (sung by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss)**_

…

_She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette_

He looked at his hands. They were dry and cracked, scratched all over from taking care of the rose bush. There was a burn on the middle finger on his left hand.

_She broke his heart, he spent his whole life tryin' to forget_

"…You knew I was protected. You knew that I would be safe…"

His long fingers massaged his eyes, willing for his tears to fall. If they fell, then the maybe pressure behind his eyes would go away. Maybe he would be able to sleep.

_We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time  
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind_

He reached to his right and picked up a bottle. Not taking his eyes off of her rose bush, he lifted the bottle up to his mouth.

It was empty.

He looked down at it, and then to his side. The bottle in his hand was one of three empty whiskey bottles lying on their sides in the dirt. He dropped the one in his hand and stood up, shakily. "There is another one here somewhere…" he muttered.

_Until' the night…  
_

He stumbled past his slashed dummies to a small cabinet that held his weaponry.

He slipped a shaking hand into one of his three chest pockets and pulled out a key. This key was the one thing he could always find. It was paired to the lock of the drawer in his cabinet. The drawer where he kept all of his alcohol.

He tripped, falling to the dirt floor. The force caused him to bite his tongue, filling his mouth with a salty, metallic taste as his teeth pierced his lip.

He didn't even cry out.

His shaking hands fumbled with the key. Lying on his back, he retrieved another bottle. Unscrewing the top, he tried to take another drink. The alcohol burned as it went down, leaving a fiery trail across the open wounds on his heart. The cuts on his lips stung white hot when wetted.

_He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger  
_

His arm gave way, spilling whiskey on his neck and chest. The bottle hit his chin. He lay there, gazing at the ceiling of his small hut. To him, the stationary room was spinning dizzyingly, taunting him in a way he could not understand.

Finally, the tears that had been barricaded, begging to be released, started to fall. The salt of the tears mixed with the bitterness of the alcohol. He pulled himself onto his hands and knees. He crawled to the cot he slept in, dragging the mostly empty bottle with him. Once on his bed, he pulled a notebook, his journal, out from under his pillow. He flipped to the end.

He stopped at a tearstained page that held a picture of her. The opposite page had a small poem, a single stanza that read:

"The cuts on my heart will disappear

If it were possible for her to be here."

He picked up a pen and added:

"She died when she saw the fire encase me

I die, my love, now that I am not with thee."

Reading what he had wrote, his hands began to shake even worse than before. He emptied the bottle he held and threw it against the wall. It shattered, the glass raining to the floor.

_And finally drank away her memory_

Jerkily, he crossed the room to retrieve another bottle. He opened this one quickly. He drank this one faster.

His eyes went out of focus.

Stumbling back to his cot, he dropped the bottle on the floor next to where he slept.

This bottle broke too.

His eyes gazed unseeingly at the broken glass.

_Life is short but this time it was bigger  
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees  
_

He reached for the shattered bottle. Taking the largest piece, he turned to his journal.

The words went in and out of focus.

_We found him with his face down in the pillow  
With a note that said, "I'll love you till I die"  
_

Blinking slowly, he turned to the wall. He pulled himself into a kneeling position, and carved into the wall:

"To the woman dancing high in the sky

You need to know: I'll love you till I die.

I'll love you when I die."

He fell down into his pillow face first, his face still wet with tears.

_And when we buried him beneath the willow  
_

When he opened his eyes, he saw her. She was smiling at him, though her eyes were sad.

_The Angels sang a whiskey lullaby  
_

_La la la la la la la, la la la la la la laa  
La la la la la la la, la la la la la la laa_

…

Her heart shattered the day he told her that he didn't love her anymore.

_The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself  
_

She knew that his reasons were good. She would have been surprised if he had still loved her. Her actions had caused the death of someone he loved. Someone he loved more than her.

She had a lot of nerve to come back. A lot of nerve to go to his house.

A lot of nerve to kiss him.

The kiss meant nothing to him. To him, he was awake. He was back with his family, who he had been away from for years, although he did not know it.

_For years and years, she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath  
_

No one could cheer her. No one could fill the gaping hole in her chest where her heart went. Where her heart had been, before he took it with him and left her.

She watched him from the corner of the room. He was hugging his daughters. He was waking his wife. He was reunited with his mother.

She was intruding.

_She finally drank her pain away a little at a time_

_But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind  
_

Leaving quickly, she ran through the smoky town, trying to find a place, any place, that would have something to take her pain.

Johnny Nimble's liquor store.

Perfect.

She ran in and collected all the bottles of whiskey he had. When she went to the counter, the man behind the counter took in her appearance.

She had black surrounding her eyes and trailing down her cheeks to her chin. Her lips, usually a perfect red, were pale. It was blatantly obvious that she was wearing lipstick. Her cheeks were splotchy from crying, pink in some places and a deathly pale in others.

He did not ask her for identification. He did not ask her if she was a member of the hand.

He bade her good day.

_Until the night  
_

Having nowhere to go, she sat in an abandoned field.

_She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger  
_

Opening the first bottle, she stared at it. Never had she ever tried this hard to make the pain leave.

She took a large swallow.

The liquid burned her mouth, leaving a fiery pain in her throat. She could feel it in her stomach, leaving her gasping in pain.

At least she couldn't feel her broken heart anymore. She could not feel the pieces halving, and the halves halving. The vibrations caused by unrequited love were masked by the burning of the whiskey.

_And finally drank away his memory  
_

He was blurring in her mind. A sudden fear gripped her as she realized that she could not remember the color of his eyes.

_Life is short but this time it was bigger_

_Than the strength she had to get up off her knees  
_

She fell onto her back. What color were his eyes? What was his name?

Who was he?

She pulled herself to her knees with difficulty. With a shaky hand, she reached into her shirt, pulling a picture out from under her breast.

It was of him. She stood next to him, a smile on her face. Their cheeks were rosy from the cold, but they could not feel it. They were too in love.

His eyes were blue.

_We found her with her face down in the pillow  
Clinging to his picture for dear life_

The picture fell from her shaky grasp. Gasping, she fell to her stomach, reaching out for it. A sudden wind blew it away from her.

A guttural sob burst from her pale lips. She opened another bottle, the first lying empty and forgotten beside her.

Taking another drink, she pressed a curl of her golden hair to her mouth, tears seeping through her tightly closed eyes.

_We laid her next to him beneath the willow_

They found her the next day. She was cleaned up and buried under the willow tree near under which she had died.

He came to her funeral.

As she was lifted, a breeze blew past them, ruffling her shining golden hair.

A small piece of paper danced past, and he snatched it out of midair, refusing to let anything be happy on this horrible day. He glanced at it.

It was the picture.

Tears welled up in his eyes and his heart broke as he realized how much she had still loved him, even after he had left her.

He slipped the picture into her cold hand, and watched through tear blurred eyes as she was lowered into her grave.

_While the Angels sang a whiskey lullaby  
_

_La la la la la la la, la la la la la la laa  
La la la la la la la, la la la la la la laa_

…

_**I do hope that this was enjoyable. Or at least well written…**_

_**Please review and I shall love thee forever!**_

_**Lurvies!**_


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